Quotes About Writing

I've been around many different lives, many different voices. It was amazing material for a writer.

There are two voices: the first says write; the second hardly speaks, but I know what he wants. And if I let him, nothing would get done. He hovers at the edges.

I was allowed to write about race using an elevator metaphor because of Toni Morrison and David Bradley and Ralph Ellison. Hopefully, me being weird allows someone who's 16 and wanting to write inspires them to have their own weird take on the world, and they can see the different kinds of African American voices being published.

That's the really fun thing about writing for series versus just doing a pilot or even doing a feature: you get to live with your actors, and as you learn their voices and they learn your dialog, you're kind of building the characters together.

The main thing is to believe writers know what their voices are, and if they are left alone, they will come through with something. There are a load of brilliant U.S. comedies: at the moment, I'm loving 'Girls.' People say the U.S. is more conservative; I think, actually, it is a bit looser here, but trends change.

I name the genre that I write in as 'novel of voices.'

I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.

When you're writing a pilot, unless you already have an actor attached to the project, you're writing it with all the voices sort of in your head. Once you actually cast it, the actors become the voices of the characters, and you start to write for them and their strengths.

I've been getting interested in reimagining folk songs and writing songs that should have existed but didn't, particularly around the Civil War when black voices were muted and only allowed particular channels.

If you want to be a writer, you have to learn to write in other people's voices until you get the chance to write in your own.

After writing for TV for a while, I got sort of fed up with all of the cancellations and the volatility in that industry. Also, you're always writing for someone else's character and story, and I really wanted to develop my own.

I definitely prefer to write under my own volition and see what happens.

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

Also, if nothing else, writing this book has really changed the way I experience bookstores. I have a whole different appreciation for the amount of work packed into even the slimmest volume on the shelves.

I have also written some poems which have not been collected in a volume.

I wrote 'Marvels,' which was about a guy who had two daughters, and I wrote 'Astro City Volume 2 #1,' which was about a guy who had two daughters. In both cases, about a year and a half or two years apart. And then after that, I had two daughters, about a year and a half or two years apart.

In 1971, when I was 29, I wrote my first volume of poetry. I am a poet, and I have published four books of my poems.

My first book was an adult novel, 'Down Among the Gods,' published by Virago, and I've written poems as well, a slim volume of poetry.

Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

If I had a story idea that I felt would work best in three volumes I might write a trilogy eventually. I'd very likely write it all at once, though, so I could work on it as a whole and not broken into individual volumes.

If I had a story idea that I felt would work best in three volumes I might write a trilogy eventually. I'd very likely write it all at once, though, so I could work on it as a whole and not broken into individual volumes. I don't always write in order, so composing multi-book stories could get complicated.

Once in a while, I write in Malay and work on something fun that's more for the local Malaysian market, and when that happens, it's always something really special; it speaks volumes that I'm doing it for my fans who have been there for me since day one.

I do not keep a diary. Never have. To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit.